Barrydale, can you believe it?

Massimo Cecconi, a photographer, writer and since some years even a skilled painter who lives and works since more than twenty years in South Africa finds himself trapped in Barrydale. He sent Cyberday following letter accompanied by some pictures of his recent paintings. Barrydale, can you believe it? Barrydale, a god forsaken corner of the world, a nothing in the middle of nothing, a place good for tourists, as tourists never stop for more than a couple of hours, they just look at the view, take two pictures, always the same, eat the same food at the same restaurant and off they go, sure as hell and fast as bulletts. Barrydale! Here some figures: beautiful girls: none, zero, zulch. People with some sense of humour: two or three (they never last long, either or, their sense of humour never last long). Movie halls: zero. Dentists: zero (same for vets, lawyers, prostitutes and dog trainers), one doctor: just one, a she, blonde, carries a gun and speak a language I don’t understand (better, I never give a hoot what doctors say). And here I was…in Barrydale!…couldn’t believe it! Always been a city boy, always sitting in the traffic – as far as I can remember -, getting any food I wanted, watching the last craze in matter of movies, buying trendy expensive clothes and running always late. For a year, since in Barrydale, I’ve been missing my daily overdose of stress, the big city healthy depression of the closet rebel. Then suddenly, like the blink of an eye, like taking a wrong turn off, Barrydale …crushed by the annihilating wordless sun of a Sunday afternoon… I could lie on the road in front of my house (the main road) waiting for the car, truck, bike, cow, putting a stop to all ravaging doubts: nothing, no cars, no trucks, nobody shaking his head, not even the neighbour’s dog barking, not even the fame of a cursed demented Hamlet. „Barrydale won’t have my bones“ for a year I kept repeating it to myself, looking at the stolid, beautiful mountains from where the clouds pour down like frozen waterfalls, watching the vineyards degrading towards the river, listening to the scream of peacocks and hadidas filling the valley, hurting the silence, unable to wake up the ghosts of self recluse inhabitants sitting like stones behind closed curtains…“Barrydale won’t have my bones!“. Then you move – you have to – from the impossible question to the possible question: „Where else?“ Stupid as it sounds, it did the trick. Deep down I knew I couldn’t be anywhere else: Barrydale, bus terminal for a silent inertial 72 kilos over-evolved colony of bacteria. Won’t go further, tired to squeeze the impossible into the possible, the search has to come to an end. Besides, hate to travel, hate travel agencies brochures, proliferating high tech shoes to carry around any massificated body of cameras, backpacks and common places, hate respectable crowds basking in the discrete warmth of self-esteem, hate to talk hope to people talking money, to hyperactive, body conscious, health conscious, fashion conscious monsters, politely stepping and crashing over each other with the indolence of pachyderms and the indifference of fresh roses in a nice manicured suburbian middle class garden. „Where else?“, rather the desert, rather this stony village too dumb to pretend, too dry to lie, where at least a smile is not cheap currency. For what I care, for what they’re worth, Barrydale can have my bones. Cyberday is adding Massimo Cecconis pictures beneath his letter. Some are for sale. Please contact bjhuck@cyberday.de